“I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.” ~ Charles M. Schulz
Illness has a way of narrowing down your scope of concern. The more severe it is, the more it seems you must withdraw into your heart and mind to deal with it. Long-term fears and dreads tend to fade from consciousness or are perhaps crowded out by more pressing immediate concerns and if you’re lucky, the process can actually put life back into perspective.
Charles Schulz’ “new philosophy” is funny in a painful kind of way, but life is generally a thorough mixture of matters pleasant and disagreeable. You may have come to realize that the mixture is a given and largely beyond your control, but how you face the mixture is completely up to you. Further, you might have noticed that you really do have an option when it comes to the way you think about the future.
Think about it this way: you can give the prospect of good more weight in your heart than you do the dread of evil. The moment you do, the tide of your life will begin to turn. You cannot exert a radiance influence on the world around you when you are paralyzed with dread, but you can have a tremendous impact when you are buoyed by the prospect of good.
You needn’t contract a terrible illness to come to terms with these realizations. You needn’t wait for a life-changing moment to change your life. You can be a force of change in your world, an agent of creative change, by simply allowing for a change in emphasis. Give weight to the prospect of good. Stop wasting time and energy dreading ill things.
The circumstances you face will be what they are, but you can be who you determine to be when you open the door to greet them.
Gregory Hake 
Look forward to the bright prospect of a brilliant future, regardless of how it looks on the outside. Entering the Kingdom of consciousness that allows for a perspective well beyond the limitations that most surrender too, the choice is clear, and so too the future!
Especially now.
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My husband and I were just discussing internet forums and how when doing research on different topics you can easily get dragged into a cesspool of information that has been distorted through the lens of folks identifying with illness not wellness (be it health or any topic really). He was noting that the imbalance of the volume of and energy spent on the ill side of things featured on the internet is in part due to healthy people having better things to do! I thought it was a great point, and this is a wonderful post to show the choice we each have when circumstances, whatever they may be, come knocking.
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“The circumstances you face will be what they are, but you can be who you determine to be when you open the door to greet them.” This is a great way to put it, and so true!
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I think one of the reasons that this works so well is that we usually have an overarching theme for how we see our lives. Some people wallow in self-pity and dread every day, and some people see that there might be things that need to change (and almost certainly will be), but overall their life is a positive experience. It is important to be able to see life both in terms of the long and the short view, because you can’t get too caught up in the short term issues that are happening to you, and you also need to have a general idea of the path your life is taking. While it is sometimes useful to have the long or the short term views in greater focus at certain times, you eventually have to see both of them if you want to be able to lead a balanced life.
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If we do not change the various improper attitudes we may carry by our own volition, then something has to force a change as these attitudes are in direct conflict with natural law which will always be greater, stronger than individual attitude – unless they are harmonized. This will continue to occur until we get it right. That’s what I see when I look around, in my life and the lives of others, through the lens of a universe that exists because it is lawful and maintains integrity in all things. Much discomfort we experience can easily be avoided by emphasizing a proper adjustment to life, in promoting sound education that cultivates this sense of thorough integrity. Life IS good this way and even though the world that presents itself to one is a mixture of all the people’s choices, one need not become discouraged from the chaos because living in good conscience brings the most precious reward – peace. This is how we can bless the world if we so care for it.
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Having control over the only thing we can control seems intelligent. We can wish things were different and wish our lives away. What is working and where can I put my efforts. No matter what the situation is we can always decide in what spirit and with what attitude we’ll greet the world. Thanks for the emphasis on our creative ability.
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This is what freedom sounds like!
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I do feel that we, humans, do need to have those life changing moments in order to change our own lifes, and the patterns that we have allowed ourselves to become so comfortable with. It has been said that by only facing one’s own death, is one capable of seeing truly one’s life. To know the importance or lack there of, of what we have spent our entire lifetimes chasing!! We can then see through the illusion of what has hidden the truth. A wise person begins to KNOW where the true treasures of life are to be found, then one can recognize and clearly see what can be lost.
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